Stage 2

By Sarah Noone and Echo Jia

“Feeling love brings a special sense of belonging, warmth and security to our children. When they experience themselves as loved, they build a healthy self-esteem, and become free to love others and engage the world with less fear” - Bill Hallam, Child Psychologist & Professor Crag Olson, Melbourne, Australia

This week’s focus for stage 2 was on LOVE, as we celebrated Valentine’s Day. We invited our children to come to school dressed in red or pink on Tuesday and Thursday. We read a story called “In My Heart, A Book of Feeling” by Jo Witek and “When I’m Feeling Love” by Trace Moroney, which led us to talk about this great feeling we all have, and how to show our appreciation to the people we love.

During group time, we encourage our children to talk about the people they love, and why they feel that way about these people. When our children talk about love, they may be expressing their feelings of attachment and affection towards the people around them, such as family members, friends, or even their favourite toy or pet. They are beginning to understand emotions and relationships, and talking about love can be a way for them to express and explore these concepts. We also incorporated “Love” at our atelier. We invited our children to do the heart shaped prints for the people they love, which is an activity to support the open web space (area between thumb and index finger) that will build the muscle strength for our pincer grip.

For young children to celebrate Valentine's Day as a way to learn about love, friendship, and kindness, provides an opportunity for them to express their appreciation for the people they care about, and to practise social and emotional skills such as empathy, communication, and sharing. Through creative activities, storytelling, and sharing their ideas, our young children can develop a deeper understanding of what it means to be loved and how to show love and affection to others. Celebrating Valentine's Day can also help to create a positive and inclusive environment where our children feel valued and supported.

EYLF Outcomes:

1.4 Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect.

2.1 Children develop a sense of connectedness to groups and communities and an understanding of their reciprocal rights and responsibilities as active and informed citizens.

3.1 Children become strong in their social, emotional and mental wellbeing.

5.3 Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media.

5.4 Children begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work.

Stage 3

By Susan Casey, Daniella Gosty, Emily Hunt and Fiona Liddell

My World, Your World

Learning about what is important to your family and to the culture of the society we live in provides opportunities to teach the children to connect with and contribute to the world.

In the Stage 3R class we start our mornings with our Acknowledgement to Country and the first activities for the year in our classroom included looking at the country we live in, ‘Australia’, and creating our placemats for the tables. This year we used the aboriginal stamp of symbols that the indigenous people use in storytelling. The children showed an interest in the Australian animals and finding Australia on the world globe. We read many stories, and the story ‘Waddle, Giggle Gargle’ by Pamela Allen about a magpie caught the children’s imagination as they chanted the magpies call of "waddle giggle gargle paddle poodle”. Following the story, we made our own version of a funny hat to hopefully stop the magpie from swooping at us if we walked by.

Cultural celebrations are an important part of who we are as a family and society and the children in the class were also introduced to the celebrations of the Lunar New Year (as many families celebrate this festival) through stories, music and dance, and small group discussions. We also read the Chinese New Year story that introduced the 12 zodiac animals of the Lunar New Year, and we found out this year’s animal is the Rabbit. We discovered that in Stage 3R we are all born in the year of the pig and our teacher was born in the year of the goat. At the atelier, the children were invited to participate in decorating lanterns, creating fireworks with paint and rabbit prints with the sponges We also did a group collaborative project to decorate a lantern that all the children were invited to participate in. Our final experience was to make a Chinese dragon with a body and head that we then used with instruments to create a parade. We learnt new songs that included “See the lion dance and prance, fireworks pop, drums go boom boom boom, and the children laugh and play all on Chinese New Year’s Day.”

Love is in the air!

We hope you all had a wonderful Valentines with your families.

The children looooooved sharing the love with our celebration of love and friendship for Valentine’s Day. They were excited about making a special card to be given and they talked to us about who they love. Many hearts were created in the playdough area, and we painted hearts at the easel, along with colouring heart patterns at the table. The children talked about mums, dads, brothers and sisters and our new friends in the classroom as the people that they love.

Happy Valentine’s to all.

EYLF Outcome 2-2 : Children are connected with and contribute to their world by responding to diversity with respect.

Stage 4

By Jane Pledger, Sandra Carberry, Nina Bergel,Yuliya Ginis, Christina Mandalidis and Cassandra Latham

This week, the children and educators at Reddam ELS celebrated Valentine’s Day, the day of love. It was so beautiful seeing all our little people dressed in shades of pink and red and some of the teachers were even surprised with chocolate and flowers from the children.

In preparation for Valentine’s Day the Stage Four children were very busy creating beautiful pieces of art to display in our piazza.

Before we started our love-related activities the question was asked: “What is love? What does it mean?” The children had some answers:

Edwyn: Love is giving presents to others.

Rafferty: Making love hearts.

Mackenzie: Also kissing for love.

Oliver: Hugging.

Mikala: Kindness and loving people.

Thomas: Giving you pretty stuff and doing something for others.

Henry: More Hugs.

For their Valentine’s art activity, the children in Nina’s class could choose from a variety of paper pieces which included colourful paper, cellophane and shiny squares, to create a beautiful love heart collage, with each piece of paper representing a piece of their heart.

A benefit of making collages is that it helps children to strengthen their fine motor skills by selecting paper pieces using their fingers and then sticking then into place. It also further facilitates great hand and eye coordination to move and fit it onto their love heart shape.

To further extend on our creative expression, we read the book ‘This Love’ by Isabel Otter and Harriett Lynas. This timeless book shows that love is a common language with the power to unite, wherever you come from.

After reading the story, we further reflected on who or what we love.

Here are some of the children’s responses:

Oliver: I love Marshmallow and going to the movie.

Henry: I love my Mummy.

Kaitlyn: Mummy and Daddy and Erinn and ice -cream.

Rafferty: I love my Mummy and Daddy.

Edwyn: I love chickens.

Mackenzie: I like my cat Trixie-Lou.

Allegra: I love my Mummy and my daddy, Harry and Angus and going to the movies. And ice-cream.

Innaya: My brother and my cousins.

Thomas: My Mummy and my Daddy and my brother and my sister.

Chloe: I love my brother and my Daddy.

Harlow: Playing with my Mummy and Daddy.

Rafi: I love my doggie and my brother.

Louis: I love my cousin and my whale.

Mikala: I like my Mummy and my Daddy and my doggie.

As an additional art activity, the children created Valentine’s Day cards for their loved ones.

We wish all the families a wonderful weekend filled with love.